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Summary

This page offers an overview of why we are interested in employment training as a means of encouraging local economic growth and offers insight on what does and doesn’t work in this policy area.

Policy design can influence effectiveness. For example, short courses and on-the-job training may help improve employment outcomes.

It summarises some of the evidence we already have on what works when delivering these types of programmes, provides guidance on what we know about the effectiveness of different ‘design features’, and offers some thoughts on improving evaluation as well as some case study examples. Throughout the page you’ll find links to further resources including a more detailed discussion of why we look at employment training, our full evidence review and toolkits, as well as evaluation resources.

What do we mean by Employment Training and how can it deliver local economic growth?

Employment training refers to training targeted at people over 18, including retraining initiatives. Employment training at the What Works Centre focuses on the impact of training that is in some way publicly subsidised.

Training is intended to support local economic growth by improving skills. Higher skills at the local (and national) level are linked to better economic performance and improved labour market outcomes.

Governments support employment training because of the strong links between skills and economic outcomes and because:

Firms may not provide enough training if they worry that trained workers will leave.

Firms and workers may under-estimate the benefits of training.

The public benefits of training, e.g. in the form of higher local economic growth, may exceed the private benefits.

Governments can provide direct or indirect support for a range of employment training policies such as:

Provision of formal qualifications.

Courses on soft skills.

Job search advice.

Classroom training.

On-the-job training and internships.

Short-term intensive courses.

Long-term retraining leading to a degree.

Training policies are often delivered as part of wider labour market programmes like the New Deal and the Work Programme.

What policymakers need to know when designing employment training programmes

The evidence suggests that the design features of employment training programmes are more important in determining effectiveness than wider economic factors such as the availability of jobs. The existing evidence base provides some guidance on how to develop programmes to improve policy effectiveness.

Some of this evidence is discussed in our evidence review, with additional evidence on particular aspects of programme design summarised in our toolkits:

What policymakers and academics need to know when evaluating employment training programmes

We need to improve our understanding of the value for money of different approaches to employment training. Future evaluations should help us understand which aspects of programme design can improve cost effectiveness as well as providing a more accurate assessment of the overall effect of schemes. You can read more about how to evaluate here.

To help practitioners to evaluate employment training policy, we have pulled out some examples of good practice in this area: